Friday, December 20, 2013

Google for Entrepreneurs and NorthstarConsulting.pl Mentors Pitching for Startups with their "Pitch!" Program in Krakow

By: Paul Chen

Between November 14,
2013 and December 13, 2013 Google for Entrepreneurs along with
NorthstarConsulting.pl in partnership with Flowbox conducted a series of
sessions for their pilot program called "Pitch!" The main goal
of the program was to help startups with their pitch to investors through 5
training sessions and 5 workshops. They covered a variety of topics: from
an investor pitch to sales talk, to video presentation and body language. The program was provided free to the startups
but they must first apply for spots.

Poland has a lot of
talent, but sometimes it takes a little more than technical skill to break
through on the international stage. PITCH Program aims to prepare startups to
go global and compete with those from the Silicon Valley in international
contests and to help them getting accepted to international accelerators.

There was a Demo Day
at the end of the program. The winner of the demo day would be allowed to
participate in the Mini-Seedcamp to be held at Google for Entrepreneurs
on January 16, 2014. And the winner of that event would be able to participate in the Seedcamp in London.

Mr. Stanisz and Mr.
Osmanovic were the main organizers of the program. They were present at each session of the
whole program mentoring and providing commentary with the mentors. Ms. Handlovicova offer advice on sales
metrics based on her experience as a sales director for Southwestern. Mr. Jaskiewicz took the participants to a
video production studio and provided a hands-on workshop on presenting their
products and services on platforms like Youtube. Recording videos about your startup is one of
the main thing seed investors are looking for in application forms.Czysta reForma conducted a workshop in an
actual theater to help the participants with their body language because one’s
body language can send very subtle messages to the investor and customers.

Mr. Globerman provided a lecture and workshop to help the
startups understand what is going through an investor’s mind when he/she is
watching a pitch. He also educated us
about some of the behind the scenes operations of a VC. He reaffirmed something that Richard Lucas, a
local angel investor, said to me a while back.
One of the first things that he looks at when a startup pitches to him
was to determine whether the team was someone that he can do business with or
not. We also learned about the state of
the Polish investment environment. It is
still in the early stages of the development of a solid investment market. Part of the reason is the lack of awareness
of the type of investment instruments used in the market. Another reason is that making investments in
something intangible is not something that the Polish have a lot of experience
with. Most of the Polish startups are
somewhere between the incubator and the early VC rounds.

On Demo Day, we had the following mentors and experienced
entrepreneurs as the judging panel:

PawelNowak: CEO of Presspad and an active investor in many local startups

Mikolaj
Olszanski: AceStream, an innovative multimedia platform of a new
generation, which includes different products and solutions for ordinary
Internet users as well as for professional members of the multimedia market.

Michal
Mikulski: Egzotech a maker of robots for rehabilitation purposes.

The winners were Mofables(educational apps for kids) and
Whenvisited(social responsible advertising).
Mavenpad(event participant registration platform) were given a chance to
further develop their skills.

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An English blog about Krakow Startup

Hello readers, My name is Paul Chen and welcome to K’Sup. My goal is to provide you an English language based blog on the events as well as highlight some of the enterprises who are trying to get their spot on the map as well as to archive the on-going activities at the same time do some trend-spotting. I hope you will find K’Sup both informative and inspirational. The name K’Sup is a combination of K for Krakow and S for start and UP. ‘Sup is colloquial for what’s up in American slang.